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Further to the whole housing thing earlier where now that mid-level bankers and top estate agents can't afford London property, IT'S A NATIONAL EPIDEMIC it reminded me of a story I heard over the weekend.

Basically that Tory Mitchell dude who was accused of calling the Police 'plebs' got found out to be in the clear and the 3 officers totally made it up, and yet they face no action against them.

And now that the politicians and media have got hold of it there were a spate of stories over the weekend about how this needs an independent enquiry as it's not on.

They're right, it's not really; BUT I recall joeymahone posting a damning list of stats regarding police prosecutions a while back that got overlooked including members of the public dying in custody, wrongful prosecutions, illegal raids etc. yet that all goes uninvestigated.

So, in short, not really sure of what this thread is about; maybe examples of where people get interested in something because it affects them? Maybe politicians being dicks? Maybe an excuse to bash the police?

MOST FUCKING PEOPLE IN BRITAIN DIDNT LIKE THE SMITHS
Smiths fans were picked on and sneered at to a degree. they were NOT loved by the whole of the country.

I have never conspired in the nicking of public assets (attractive share sales to privatise publically owned assets) and I do NOT run the country, au contraire i am ignored. Cameron is famously NOT a smiths fan, he liked the tunes a bit maybe, or perhaps he secretly fancied morrisey. Jesus Fucking Christ how wrong can the guardian be?

when the Smiths went from being a generally laughed-at fey indie band to being canonised by Q and Mojo et al. It happened seemingly overnight with no discernible trigger. YOu used to have to BEG to get Smiths songs played at nights out and they would clear the dancefloor every time.

Mitchell was forced to resign by Cameron and number ten to act as a smokescreen on the day that Britain entered a double dip recession.

The police fabricating evidence is almost a separate matter, but yes, it's interesting that Conservative politicians are seemingly only now evening acknowledging that these kind of things occur when it happens to affect one of their own.

One would hope that people in positions of responsibility or with a modicum of intelligence would be able to empathise with others and would have been able to see that fabrication of evidence, police abuse of power and similar crimes have affected those without a voice, or without power, many more times in the past, but some people in a position to actually make a difference just aren't capable of contemplating fighting any battles other than their own, it seems.

see also Boris Island, the first new nuclear power station in 30 years or whatever it will be.

On one hand we have a situation where our rail network is woefully inadequate, a desperate need for airport expansion and a very real power shortage problme. On the other hand no-one wants it in their back gardens.

I did work experience at the Bridgwater Mercury when I was 15 and one of the things I did was sit for 3 days at the bloody Hinkley C public inquiry. Despite massive opposition they got a license approval to build a PWR but when they added it all up they finally figured they couldn't afford it so the site was supposed to be turned into a wind farm instead

has constructing nuclear reactors recently got cheaper? I know interest rates are lower but surely after Fukushima the safety implementation regulations must be pretty tight and VERY expensive

It is slightly strange when you have a conservative-led government offering overseas nationalised state providers a price floor on a utility that was public but was privatised in the interests of the markets and reduced state control.

is, rather than use state borrowing at what would be historically low levels, pass the burden on to consumers through higher bills.

Now, you could argue that this would have happened in a truly privatised industry anyway, if the electricity generating companies (most of whom are owned by nationalised european providers), had been willing to take on the risk themselves, but as will all privatisations in this country, the private companies will take the profit but still expect the state to pick up the tab and the risk of large-scale infrastructure investment.

It's interesting to see what China are doing in terms of these kind of things. They want French and German expertise and technology, and are using the great returns on investing money in infrastructure projects in the UK to buy/employ it. They do not want the equivalent expertise and technology from Britain, and the Germans and French are much more protective of their assets than the UK is.

Something was said like "following these revelations, can we trust the police", and I was just thinking yeah, the events of the last few years (eg the lies following the deaths of de Menezes & Tomlinson, the reveal of the massive Hillsborough cover-up) were bad, but these officers saying that a minister said "pleb" when he might not have is just AWFUL.

I seem to recall Polly Toynbee at the time using it as a massive stick to bash the Conservatives with as Mitchell's supposed use of the word `pleb` cut to the very core of what the Conservative party were about and was indicative of the ideological bent behind the policies etc. etc.

Haven't seen her offer a retraction anywhere of this. I don't normally need an excuse to dislike Toynbee, but she irritated me immensely on this.

Her point was pretty silly at the time though - it's pretty big overstatement of the syntactic impact of the word 'pleb' which is a fairly commonly used/misused insult even by those who aren't Tories. Especially because the evidence that he'd actually used said word was sketchy at the time and it's been largely refuted now.

Just a piece of rubbish journalism from someone who should know better. Nothing more, nothing less.

if I was arrogant (I'm obviously not...), swore at a copper and then they arrested me and fitted me up by alleging I'd said things that I hadn't, and then I lost my job as a result, I'd want more than an apology.

but in Edinburgh I got sent home 3 times. Once when it was snowing (but not even IN Edinburgh!), once when it was raining, and once when it was quite windy. In Nottingham the entire world would need to be imploding before workers without kids could go home.